He got it out of her finally. “The doctor
is much worried about her. He says she needs
a change.”

“You need it too.”

She needed food, but she couldn’t tell him that.
The state of their exchequer was alarming. It
had been revealed to her since Amy’s illness
that there was really nothing coming in until the next
quarter.

“Why didn’t you let Charlotte go, Ethel?”

“We’ve always had a maid. What would
people think?”

“And because of what people think, Amy is to
starve?”

“Anne, how can you?”

“Well, it comes to that. She needs things;
and we don’t need Charlotte.”

But when they spoke to Amy of sending Charlotte away
she was feverishly excited. “There’s
nobody to do the work.”

“I can do it,” said Anne.

“We Merrymans have never worked,” Amy
began to cry. “I’d rather die,”
she said, “than have people think we are—­poor.”

V

Maxwell was a man of action. When he saw Anne
pale he sought a remedy. “Look here, why
can’t you and your sisters come out to my farm?”

Amy, lying on her couch, very weary, facing a shadowy
future, felt his magnetism as he talked to her.
It was as if life spoke through his lips. Murray
had sat there beside her only an hour before.
He had brought her roses but he had brought no hope.